Eat Organic Food, Lower Global Warming?

Eating organic food not only is good for you, it’s good for the planet!

Organic farming may be one of the most powerful tools in the fight against global warming. It follows, then, that the more organic food you eat instead of conventionally grown food, the more organic farms will spring up (and the more regular farms will decline, or convert to organic). Thus, because organic farming sequesters carbon while conventional farming spews more of it into the atmosphere, the more organic farms and the fewer traditional farms thereare, the less carbon moves into the atmosphere.

The institute’s white paper on the subject says that if all farms were to switch to what it says is “widely available and inexpensive organic management practices” (which Rodale also calls “regenerative organic agriculture”), more than 40 percent of annual carbon emissions could be captured. At the same time, if pasture around the world were managed in this same way, another 71 percent could be sequestered.

Notice 40 percent and 71 percent equals 111 percent: that overage would mean a drawing down of the extra CO2, resulting in a reversal of warming.

Even though we may already have reached the 1.5 degree C threshold, if regenerative agriculture could help reverse global warming, how could the planet convert all farming to organic farming? Rodale’s white paper has three suggestions.

Farm this way always. Always.

The technology already exists –and has been tested successfully – to be spread throughout the globe now. Rodale says it’s inexpensive and can be adapted to all countries’ agricultural needs.

“Farm like life on Earth matters.” Rodale believes this is the global warming solution.

Organic food is known for its many health benefits; now you know of how organic farming can possibly help reverse global warming. If those two reasons aren’t enough to get you start eating organic produce, meats and dairy, what will?

The solution is farming like life on Earth matters; farming in a way that restores and even improves on the natural ability of the microbiology present in healthy soil to hold carbon. This kind of farming is called regenerative organic agriculture and it is the solution to climate change we need to implement today.

And the less carbon in the atmosphere, the less risk of rampant global warming. Organic farming